History Of Women In The Church

Right from the start, when they were among the first followers but not the first leaders, the Roman Catholic Church has seemed ambivalent toward women.

The New Testament begins, of course, with women: Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist. As an adult, Jesus gained many women followers including the sisters Mary and Martha, Mary Magdalene, and an unnamed Samaritan woman.

Mary Magdalene became the first ``evangelist`` by reporting on Easter that Jesus` tomb was empty. After the Resurrection, the Bible mentions other women leaders, such as Lydia the merchant, Phoebe the deacon, four prophet daughters of Philip, and a husband-and-wife ministry team named Aquila and Priscilla. The apostle Paul even called a woman named Junias an apostle.

As the ``Mother of God,`` ``Queen of Heaven`` and bearer of several other titles, Mary does hold a central place in church devotion - particularly under Pope John Paul II, who has encouraged veneration of her. She is said to be the subject of more paintings than any other saint. Six parishes in Broward and Palm Beach counties are named after her.

The early ambivalence shows clearly in the writings of the apostle Paul, the most prolific writer of the New Testament. In one letter, he said women should listen silently during church worship. In another he added the order not to ``teach or exercise authority over a man.``

Yet in other places Paul set out conditions for women to ``pray and prophesy.`` He also said believers were no longer ``Jew and Gentile, slave and free, male and female; you are all one in Christ Jesus.``

Still, women were not known for their prominence as priests or bishops. The reason, according to one feminist rationale, is that the women in the early church were protected; men took the brunt of Roman persecution, while the women bore the next generation of Christians.

Some feminists assert that women actually did serve the Communion bread and wine before the clergy was established in the second century. But the men who wrote the history books left out most of their achievements, the feminists surmise.

``Early Christianity was called a women`s religion; pagans said its leadership was dominated by women,`` according to Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza of the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass., and author of the influential book In Memory of Her. ``When the church collected the canon (of Scripture), it was at a time when the church was not interested in preserving women in leadership.``

Yet she notes that as late as the Middle Ages, some clerics were writing against women being bishops or priests. ``So there must have been women bishops or priests around,`` Fiorenza reasons.

As evidence that the church values women, some people point to the many women saints, such as Elizabeth Seton, an American convert who was canonized in 1976. Two others were Teresa of Avila, who died in 1582, and Catherine of Siena, who died in 1380. Pope Paul VI declared them ``doctors of the church,`` honoring their writings for their intellectual value.

``Reading the lives of the saints, it would be hard for anyone to say the church has ever discriminated against women,`` according to the Rev. Leo Armbrust of the Palm Beach diocese - an assertion that makes feminists bristle.

But the church has often kept its distance from ordinary women. Feminists quote third century church fathers as saying women were ``unclean`` and ``embody evil.`` Saint Augustine reportedly called them ``unformed men.`` The feminists complain that the church alternately ``divinizes and demeans`` women.

Orders of nuns have existed for centuries, sometimes as women`s versions of orders such as the Franciscans. A renowned modern example is the Missionaries of Charity, whose founder is Nobel Prize-winner Mother Teresa of Calcutta. And today, despite the proscriptions, women also work as teachers, hospital administrators, chancellors and other functionaries for the church.

The wall between church work and the exercise of authority, if still intact, is more porous than some people might think.